Naked Sales Pitch – Listen to the Customer First
When high end markets can’t capture the market, they sell harder. But is it necessary to sell harder?
What would happen if a sales representative cared enough about the customer to find out what the customer needed before attempting to put together a sales pitch? What would happen if the salesman actually asked the customer what they needed and listened long enough to hear more than the obligatory contact information about the customer’s needs? Would that change the sales method?
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been on the buying end of several services, most of them specific to new residents of my community. Service industries here in the Denver Metro area don’t have a clue how to meet the needs of the customer, and to be honest, they’re not asking either.
A few questions that might be helpful:
· How soon is the service required?
· Will you be using all of the service/product immediately?
· Do you need delayed service/product delivery?
· Is there a better time to deliver the product/service?
· Since you’re a new user of the product/service, is there a better way to share the user experience with you?
· Do you need multiple copies of directives?
· Will there be more than one person using this product/service?
· Are there any modifications required for accessibility?
The questionnaire I fill out after the fact, for the Television/Internet/Phone company might have been different, had anyone asked me even part of those questions. Beyond that, I’d be a happier customer, had they made an effort to make the service fit my needs rather than a one size fits all rendition, that really doesn’t EVER suit anyone.
Service industries get the majority of their clientele from returning customers. Do you need more information to continue being a client? Visit http://brandyourmarket.com for Brand Representation that suits the client and get a complimentary subscription to The Branding Iron.
© 2010 – http://janverhoeff.com
Platform Direct Marketing – The Business of Generating Leads
There’s a business paradigm my grandfather used to promote that works, and works every time. You simply have to do whatever it takes to double your business every day.
As a child, I always wanted money. My grandfather was a brilliant man. He’d tell me I could have a job but I had to pay him, the first month. The pay was easy. A penny a day and double it every day. He assured me I’d never have to pay him again, and he’d have plenty of money to pay me the wages I asked.
I remember the first time I sat down to figure out how much I’d owe him at the end of the month… A lot. Let’s just say, my grandfather never had that much money in his hands, if you added up every dollar he had for his entire life.
That is the paradigm on which generating leads works. If you just double your leads every day, you’ll have plenty of leads forever. Find someone who introduces you to someone who introduces you to someone else. You’re always meeting new people. You never run out of leads or referrals, because your new leads and referrals are giving you new leads and referrals.
The process is simply. Just introduce yourself to the first person and share your story. People love a good story and you’ve got one, yours. Just share it and watch your business grow with new people who want to share in your story. Meet a new person each day and then ask them to refer you to a friend. That’s the process by which you can meet thousands of people each month.
Are you ready?
Let’s get started generating strong business leads. Bring a friend and join us at http://denverprofessionalsnetwork.org to learn more about building your business online. Visit any of our published links for association value. (New links are being added daily, may we add yours?)
Meeting Ad Works Online
Where do you advertize your online business?
The majority of online businesses are advertized and marketed online, but there are other ways to market your business. In person marketing of your online business drives local traffic.
When you meet with co-workers, give them a card with your link and invite them to visit your website. Promote your website to family and friends, on emails and other non-internet communications. Enjoy the opportunity of marketing your Internet business through local businesses and interactive communications.
Depending on your business type, you might design bookmarks for a local library to give out. Create fliers to distribute with business documents, promoting your website locally.
Write a book and promote your book locally with book signings and meetups to bring in your audience. Invite your audience to a housewarming or “Come and Go Event” that allows people to meet you and be introduced to your website.
Become a speaker and invite people to come hear you speak locally. Use the information on your website to develop your speaking topic and promote your website through handouts that you provide to your readers. Schedule events where people will want to mingle and introduce themselves and their business online.
Profile of an Online Marketer - Success
Creating a profitable Online Marketing business is like fitting together a puzzle. The pieces may all be crooked cut and come in different sizes, but as the pieces fall into place the program you’ve selected becomes profitable and um… better, SUCCESSFUL.
Successful Internet Marketers have 10 Characteristics that Drive Their Success
If you’re interested in becoming successful in online marketing, you’ll need to make sure you have these characteristics. Read this and apply the strategies to your online business.
- be committed to developing your business
- create a well-grounded support team
- maintain quality relationships
- play fair and pick no favorites
- find your vision and keep it in view
- make sound decisions quickly
- promote risk taking on solid business ventures
- recruit and train top quality people
- recognize change as healthy and make good choices
- instill confidence in your marketing representatives
By working hard on yourself to create a rock solid image of a successful online marketer, your profile will match the image you present. This is key to accomplishing your internet marketing goals.
Viral Marketing - Extreme Traffic Generation with Targeted Magnetic Appeal
If you’re still chasing the unusual marketing option that will give you the perfect results to marketing your business, the secret to prosperity on the Internet, and the delightful opportunity to create massive amounts of interactive networking partners, you’ll want to continue reading. There are many options for advertizing and marketing your business. Many of those benefits are listed below.
- Viral Marketing is an effective tool for presenting your product to the market.
- Unusual viral traffic will find your site and focus on the entertainment you provide.
- The human element of viral marketing is desire. The more desire you stir up with your product, the more interactive your viral marketing product will be.
- Prospects will find out about your product from other marketers who promote your product for free.
- Viral Marketing makes your product become a viable option, resulting in many users acquiring the ability to promote and redistribute your products.
- Launching a viral campaign today will relate greater results for tomorrow. Traffic generated today multiplies forever.
- Viral Marketing spreads over the Internet like wildfire, no stopping your free, reproducible product when you give your readers the right to reproduce it at no additional cost.
Most people realize the value of viral marketing within their website but don’t have a clue where to start. The use every concept they can find, coming back empty, at their wits end still struggling to find the solution.
And in reality – developing a viral marketing product couldn’t be easier. Come along and let’s get started building your viral marketing products.
For more information about how to virally market your business, visit http://brandyourmarket.com and get your free ebook.
Market Portion Marketing - Get Your Fair Share
Everyone deserves an opportunity to sell their product, and it’s not a good idea to restrict sales to balance out the market, but how can you promote your business to get your fair share of the available income in your market? As more and more government promotes redistribution of wealth, the market strives to just simply grab their fair share. There are better options that doesn’t include any socialistic balancing act of government.
Getting your business out there and being recognized for what you do isn’t as easy as you might think, but it can be done. Try these steps:
- Internet Advertizing - give your name a boost with Internet Recognition Marketing using various social networks to market your Identity.
- Take Action - actually moving on marketing options instead of waiting for customers to come to you may boost your business more than any other single thing you do.
- Motivate Buyers - give your buyers an incentive to market your product. “Hey, I’ll give you an additional 5% discount when you send me one customer works.”
- Offer Buyer Incentives - give the buyer something extra. A cover for that piece of equipment might be all the coercion required to sell the equipment.
- Free Delivery - many will actually pay a bit more for the product or service if delivery is free. They don’t want to have to pay someone to deliver what they’ve paid to purchase. By all means, deliver it free.
Take a risk and get your fair share of the market by offering something greater than the next guy has. Give your buyers more than they expect to get and bring them back time after time. Who knows? You may actually get more than your share of the market!
Brand Recognition will get you where you want to go with Internet Marketing. Your people have to know what you offer. Give them an opportunity to find you by creating Identifiable Brands like the ones suggested at http://brandyourmarket.com for starters.
(c) 2009 - http://janverhoeff.com
ADVERTIZE in Lamar, Colorado
It’s my hometown, but the concepts that will work to advertize and market my business in Lamar, Colorado will work in your hometown too. Try these tips and suggestions for marketing your business locally and see if you don’t find it easier to advertize in your home town, without breaking the bank.
- Letters to the Editor of your local paper. (Here it’s the Lamar Ledger or the Local Buzz.) Talk about other people who have helped your business. Say thank you to anyone who has mentioned your business on a website or promoted your business, by recognizing theirs. Give credit where credit is due and promote your business in the process by commenting and leaving your signature in the letter.
- Call the local radio station and make a comment about local events, remind them when you say “Hello” who you are and where people can find you, to announce your event, or comment on a recent event.
- Provide an item for the gift bags given out at local events. A pen or note pad with your name on it and an address or website will grab attention. Be original, stick your name on a coffee cup and insert that.
- Offer to put up a table at a conference, for the profits. Most conferences or events would like to have more participating merchants, but have a hard time finding them.
- Blog your presence into existence and remind people you’re there by talking about them by name. (Yes, people do google their names and wonder who’s writing about them. Perhaps you need to make a “Who’s Who about Lamar, Colorado” for your town.)
- Offer to write a column for the local paper - no charge - in exchange for getting your name out there. Can’t spell? Use spell checker. Can’t write? Find an editor - your fifth grader will be fine.
- Put fliers on windows in local businesses and announce events you plan for your business. Holidays coming - plan an event on your door step. Create a float in the parade, or decorate an old car with your magnetic side banners (of course, you’ll need permission).
- Host a “Business as Usual” COFFEE at your business, after hours. Invite the Chamber of Commerce and provide simple refreshments. Bring on the marketing tools, give each of them something to take home, and invite them to sign up for a prize.
- Design book markers with your Business logo and address on them and give them away at Library events. Schedule a book signing with a local writer at your location and promote it with press releases you send to the radio stations and local papers. The writer may even offer to do a radio show and promote your business site.
These are just some of the many ways you can promote and market your business through local advertizing. Go do it! Stamp your brand on the local market with FREE business advertizing in local media.
Make a Profit Writing Copy for Local Business
Local Business Copywriting Equals Profit, Loyalty and Opportunity
An email this morning from Bob Bly reminded me of why I prefer the small town, local business route for working income and I thought I’d share my experience and methods with Internet Content Writers. As copywriters, we often get caught up in the Big Money industries, trying to compete for businesses outside our area of expertise because the money is better. This mistaken assumption may be costing you money.
With continued web growth and local businesses turning more and more to alternative income sources from Internet Business Development, more and more of them need good Internet Copy. Consider your immediate opportunity to grab business from local clients?
As a computer geek, you’re invited to help a local business with their website. Should you stop at the basic presentation, or should you pursue more business from that venue?
Small Business – Big Opportunity
Work directly with the decision maker in a small business to help generate more business, multiple revenue sources, and increase local and broad range profits. You’ll be rewarded for your efforts. These people understand the value of getting more bang for their bucks. They want dedicated, dependable service from familiar faces. Give them quality and you’ll gain profit.
Little or No Competition
Other copywriters don’t live in your town. Consider the number of copywriters in your local community. I’m betting you can’t name one, and neither can anyone else. They probably don’t live there. Copywriters are few and far between, which is why you can claim your territory and set your own price. Give it a go, try your hand at making better business in your own community.
Repetitive – Long-term Business Relationships
Loyalty among local clientele outranks any other form of loyalty. Your neighbors know you, love you and support you. Their business needs you. The potential opportunity for growing a business in your hometown is greater than any other location on earth. Business owners have been doing it for centuries, and the people understand person-to-person connection.
Build a lucrative foundation business of copywriting in your own neck of the woods and see if your business doesn’t grow exponentially from there.
Marketing Wizardry – Newsletter Production for Internet Marketers
The average newsletter only gets about 3% open, but a marketer who presents herself well and concentrates her marketing wizardry on her personality gets 45% to 52% open. What’s the difference?
1 – Put some personality in your Marketing Newsletter Online.
No, don’t write about yourself, but use your “voice” to promote and market your business, your newsletter, and more importantly YOURSELF in your newsletter. This is different from self-promotion; this is the kind of promotion that gives people a glimpse into your heart. Share your heart and get ready to jingle.
2 – Don’t be afraid of Fluff and Frills.
-ly words, a few frills, some pink fluff, and enough glitter to showcase your products, services and business expertise will not only showcase who you are, but will enhance the voice you use to speak to your customers. Be real, but be yourself. Use enough fluff to soften your rough edges.
3 – Inject energy into your newsletters.
If you’re a flamboyant person, this is a bit easier, but even the most steady and dependable person can inject a kind of energy into their newsletters. In fact, the dependable, steady kind of energy can be the best kind. It’s like flavored ice cream, the more flavor you have in the ice cream the less topping you need to add. In your newsletter, if you have some natural personality shining through, you won’t have to dress up the newsletter so much with quotes, tips and ideas other than your normal writing. Just be yourself.
An effective newsletter gets opened when it arrives.
Impact your business with effective Brand Recognition that brings your readers back time after time to get MORE of your Quality and Value.
Go to http://brandyourmarket.com and learn how your business can be instantly recognized on the Internet. Get a FREE Subscription to The Branding Iron, the Web’s FIRST RATE Brand Recognition Newsletter.
(c) 2009 - http://janverhoeff.com
7 Pro-Active Solutions
Burning Desire – Deliver 7 Pro-Active Solutions to Chill the Burn
By Jan Verhoeff
Do you have a burning desire to succeed in your online business? There’s a definite focus on the burning desire portion of success. It’s all in the solution. Let’s discuss 7 Pro-Active Solutions to Chill the Burn.
1 – Develop Magnetic Personality
You’ll be attracting people to your personality, bring them in with adoration by being an adorable person. Sometimes your cute self is attractive and you should simply be “cute”.
2 – Attain a Presence of Recognition
Make your name known. Use your name frequently and often, posting on friends blogs, posting comments and posting your own blog. Throw in some article marketing and get your name out there for the world to see.
Include a brand identification you can use as a signature line. Some people have relative signatures; others have signatures that just simply work with their business and identity. Find yours and use it.
4 – Become an Accredited Expert
Write articles exposing your expertise and publish them in places where experts are published. You’ll get recognition and you’ll become an accredited expert for your knowledge.
5 – Dare to Dream
Take a moment to dream and set your sites on greatness. You’ll understand the power of your dreams once you begin to put them into action. Dare to dream, dream big dreams and strive to achieve those dreams.
6 – Set Goals
In all of time, you’ll never know what you can accomplish if you make no effort to accomplish goals you set for yourself. Set your goals based on the dreams you desire and move steadily toward achievement.
7 – Visualize Reality
Each day, take a moment to visualize your reality into existence. You can accomplish anything you desire so long as you help enough others to accomplish their dreams. Set your mind to your heart’s desires and set out to fulfill your greatest dreams.
People with goals succeed because they know where they are going… It’s as simple as that. – Zig Ziglar
Are you ready to achieve your burning desires?